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Tactical Cognition?
Any thought or decision that interacts with another’s is Tactical – whether in cooperation or competition.
Every decision, major or minor, spontaneous or considered, has a cost called “Cognitive Load”. We each have a capacity in this area, same as any other. Learn to be aware of Cognitive Load, how to manage it and prepare for it ahead of time. Ever had your mind go blank, not known what to do or say? We call that the “Mental Blue Screen of Death” (computer-talk) and its consequences can be terrible.
Think about it…whether you are struggling for advantage or anticipating a team-mate’s needs, your purpose is to anticipate another person’s thoughts and actions. The same skills are involved. Only the motivation and effect are different. More
Combat Military & Tactical Police:
A prominent researcher said “Fighter pilots are going to LOVE this!!!”
An instructor at one of our War Colleges said “This [referring to the model and thought processes] is what we wish all our students would learn.”
Fast high-consequence decisions are your life. Can you improve them? More
The 1990’s were officially the “Decade of the Brain”. We know a great deal more about the brain, and therefore about ourselves, for that effort. Work has continued and accelerated since then, with organizations like Society for Neuroscience (SfN). With that foundation and momentum, it is reasonable to expect our understanding of the brain itself to progress even further in coming years.
Along with study at the neuroscience level, more functional or “operational” level understanding has been gained with organizations like Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). During Dr. Maier’s first years of membership, CEDM (the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making SIG) grew to be the biggest in the society, evidenced by the beginning of a separate journal. Terms like “Naturalistic Decision Making” (NDM) and “Situation Awareness” (SA) became commonplace.
Current work here at TactiCog(sm) is directed at running 2nd and 3rd-level validation studies of our training at both the operational (SA & DM) and the neuroscience levels, before full release.
This is definitely the time to get involved. More
…..More tangible than a “Mental Edge”.
And it’s not another “Art of War” or “Book of Five Rings” interpretation seminar.
Tactical Cognition, and management of Cognitive Load is measurable, quantifiable, on 4 Performance Dimensions (PD). This means you can know how you ranked on 4 defined attributes, and how much you improved on any one of them since last time. No longer a feeling that you just wave a hand at. Each PD is an asset with a numeric score and a real-world value. Together, they form a profile of how you approached the problem this time. Individuals differ in what combination of PDs they have relied on in the past. In this way, it is a little like an MBTI profile. But your PD profile is not intrinsic, it is learned from past experience. Research has demonstrated that effort focused on one of these PDs can increase it, actually changing how you view and approach a challenge. Nothing magical. Through the activities we teach you, you learn a new way to learn. More
It’s not “Mind Mapping”
Mind Mapping tends to be Declarative knowledge–what a thing is. We work more closely with Procedural knowledge–what to do and how to do it. It is action-based. This means we are interested in decisions based on conditions. Recognizing cues in a situation and responding in a way that resolves the situation or shifts it in a favorable direction.
Adult Learning
“Child” learning tends to consist of defined problems where a particular “right” answer is desired. The great majority of our education nowadays is designed this way because it is easier to run in a factory-style setting, even if the students are adults. Easier is the keyword here.
“Adult” learning also really has nothing to do with age. Adult learning starts with a problem-space in which the first thing the student does is define a problem. This is a higher-order skill that we try to learn throughout our lives, with very little guidance. It is also what we call “the richness of play”. There is no single “right” answer. This at first glance makes the teacher’s job much more difficult. At first glance is the key phrase here.
Resilience & Graceful Degradation
You are going to “fail”…many times. Sometimes it might be just the thing you needed to do. Does it tend to freeze you, or do you promptly, lightly and effectively keep moving forward with a course adjustment?
Thanks for coming by.
As you can see, we’ve got some massive re-design underway, with lots more info & some hot new calendar items.
While you here anyway, drop in on:
www.tacticalcognition.com: the research work that earned Dr. Maier his Ph.D., and informs everything here.
www.wangkiuwingchun.com: 37 years of study and teaching that generated the concepts and model for the research.
Contact us at:
hmaier_at_tacticog.com